The town of Crothersville!

We are now in Indianapolis across the street from the speedway with a group from Camping World. We are rather packed in with lots of huge, fabulous motorhomes from all over the country. There are events for 3 days. Today was a practice day at the speedway. About 60,000 came today for a race, vintage indy cars, Kid Rock concert, autographs, pit stop competition and lots of displays and other fun events. It was interesting to tour the huge track - something that will not be possible Sunday when 250,000 people are there. The track is gigantic, but not plush. All of the seats are aluminum flat benches. Not being big racing fans, a lot of the happenings are new to us and steeped in tradition. We are learning.

Visited the town of Crothersville, Indiana yesterday! It is a town of about 1600 in a farm area. Drove all the streets and went to the library to see what info we could find! There was very little. Could not find anything about the origin other than the date it was started as the town of Retreat (1854) and the date the name was changed to Crothersville (1857). The librarian had 4 large books about the county history, but we found almost nothing about why the name was changed and about who or what was the inspiration for the change. Will have do do more research at home. There does not seem to be any active historical group or interested people in the area.

Went to an art fair in "Butchertown" Louisville - a very old area of the town. The town is full of modest very narrow houses (12 to 18 feet wide) as they were taxed by the frontage on the street in the early days. The lots are also small. There are very few "multiple" dwellings here - virtually all small single family.

Red trucks are popular here. Sort of like white trucks in our area. About 60% are red.

We saw fireflys in our campground at Charleston State Park!

Barge traffic on the Ohio river is fun to watch. There are locks and turns!

Forgot to mention that while in Bowling Green we went to the GM Corvette and Cadillac sports car assembly plant. It was a great tour where you are on the floor with the assembly line and the workers. Fascinating to see the robots and the assembly from nothing to driving the car off the end of the line.

Bob toured the Mammoth Cave where there is over 300 miles of underground tunnels. He did not walk the whole length.

We are now at the Charlestown State Park in Indiana. It is on the Ohio River and just north of Louisville, Ky. We have been dancing back and forth between 3 states and 2 time zones. Hard to figure out what time it is and hard to know which time zone the TV shows we want to watch originate from.

Been touring around the Louisville area. Madison, Indianna is a small town that we found especially interesting. It's a very old river town and even today it only has local roads to it - no McDonalds, etc. The buildings are all 2-3 stories and extremely ornate. The beautiful countryside around Louisville has numerous fabulous horse breeding ranches. Louisville is a nice city.

We are pleased to see that Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana are much cleaner than the states further south. Its nice not to see so much trash! The towns and rural areas are tidy and we seldom see any abandoned houses.

Linda and friend in Nashville.

Today we toured Nashville which is 80 miles from where we are staying at the Mammoth Caves National Park. The Kentucky and Tennessee countryside on the way is very nice - those rolling green hills and lots of trees and flowers. Nashville is nice. We took an antique trolley ride to see the major attractions. Of course music is prominent here. It is interesting that the recording studio area is part old restored "homes" and part newer small buildings. It has a very small town feel. There are some "expected" touches - like the guitar shaped swimming pool at the hotel where Elvis used to stay when he came to record. We expected that we might have trouble understanding a tour guide with a heavy southern accent, but ended up with a fellow from New York with a strong Brooklyn accent! He had lived in Nashville for some time and did a good job, but he has not lost his accent.

A few recent observations:

1. We have seen several groups of prisoners doing work in the parks and picking up trash on the highways. Some even had black and white stripe clothes. Others wore orange or gold suits.

2. A common yard decoration is plastic deer - from one to small herds. It seems to be the mid south version of the Florida pink flamingo which is still alive down there.

3. Once we got away from Florida and the Gulf coast the "for sale" signs have declined to a normal level.

4. We have seen more Mexican people than we expected. Like our area, they are prominent in construction and yard maintenance.

Along the Blue Ridge Parkway

We drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway and are now in Kentucky in the Daniel Boone National Forrest. Finally found a train trip that worked for us. It was the Big South Fork Scenic Railway. The trip was into timber and coal country and along a beautiful river gorge.

The following are some interesting observations along the way:

1. It is surprising to us that we have not seen many black people in Tennessee and Kentucky.

2. There are a lot of "good old boys" and more Ford trucks than in Seattle.

3. A local high school mascot is the Redhounds.

4. People set up sort of "garage sales" out of their cars on the street corners complete with tables, etc.

5. Many stores set their merchandise outside by the road. There will be a gift/florist shop that has 20-30 arrangements (artificial) outside.

6. We continue to see "birthplace" signs. The latest was Lee Majors in Middleboro, Ky.

7. There are "Dollar stores" everywhere.

8. There are still so many Baptist Churches! We are starting to try to predict how many of them we will see between destinations.

On the way home today we drove through Corbin, Ky - home of the original Col Sanders KFC. There is a Sanders restaurant/museum there along with the current KFC fare.

We find that we generally like Tennessee and northern Mississippi. Have not seen much of Kentucky, yet.

We were tired of constantly searching for good radio stations and purchased XM Satellite Radio. Seems to be pretty good.

We traveled through some really beautiful country today to Davey Crocket's Birthplace State Park in Tennessee. Contrary to the song, he was not "born on a mountain top in Tennessee". He was born in a magnificent valley on the shore of the Nolichucky river where we are camped for 2 days. Gorgeous! This area is wonderful with many upscale "normal" houses with lots of property.

The "National Ancient Brick" museum is in this area - proving yet again that there is a museum dedicated to everything.

It is interesting that the Smoky Mountain area has the most diverse collection of flora on the planet! It is beautiful and changes in each season. The Fall must be spectacular! We have seen so many new (to us) birds and also saw a huge majestic Golden Eagle. The monarch butterflies are beautiful.

Great Smoky Mountain National Park
River in the National Park

We have been driving around the Great Smoky Mountain National Park for the last 2 days. It is a huge and beautiful area with rivers, and what we would call foothills. There are no snow capped peaks in the distance like mountain parks in the West. It is still beautiful and we have really enjoyed the meandering rivers, waterfalls and trees. There is an abundant wild rhododendron that is not in bloom yet. This is the most visited National Park in the country and we can see why as it is so big and so unique in the East and South. We never did see any bears, but have seen lots of turkeys, birds and butterflies. We have been on some interesting roads - gravel, curves and hills!

Found a really wonderful Christmas Shop in Pigeon Forge. It was a surprise as this is such a hillbilly country and rather tacky area. It was by far the classiest Christmas Shop I have seen in the South. The Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area is themed a lot on Dolly and Elvis. However there are also upscale areas and shops and the towns are well designed for tourist needs. We have had some great meals out! There are a lot of big money houses in the Tennessee hills.

Drove around nearby Knoxville, a nice town. It was a beautiful day with low humidity and we had a nice lunch on a veranda overlooking the Tennessee River.

Plantation mansion near Natchez.

Hooray a picture! This is one of the beautiful plantation mansions near Natchez.

We have been driving along the Mississippi and Alabama borders heading toward Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee. The terrain has gotten more hilly and we actually got up to 1300 foot altitude as we traveled up the west side of the Appalachians. There is a beautiful dark red plant carpeting the side of the freeway that is called Crimson Clover. We are seeing interesting road kill - armadillos, turtles, possum, snakes etc. We actually saw a place called "The Road Kill Grill". We kept driving! We took the Ocoee Scenic Byway on the edge of the Cherokee National Forrest. Stopped at the location of the 1996 Olympic kayaking competition. This area is under the supervision of the Tennessee Valley Authority that was able to control the water flow to benefit the competition. Also passed the National Bird Dog Hall of Fame Museum! (We have seen museums for just about everything!) Also passed preparations on the Tennessee River for a Bass Masters Tournament at Guntersville this weekend. The fishermen were gathering and there were lots of fabulous bass boats. Stayed at a beautiful Forrest Service park. Woke up the next morning to rain, among the trees and next to the river - it felt like the Northwest. Drove along the edge of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park heading toward a specific campground that happened to be closed. Since it has rained there is so much fog that we could not see the views. We assume that's why its called "Smoky" mountains. Hopefully it will clear some tomorrow. We ended up in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee near the Park. The home of "Dollywood". It is quite the tourist trap with a "strip" area that is a mini Las Vegas country style. Our RV resort is near the strip, but very remote with horses next door.

We have a water line break that will need attention tomorrow.

Boats along the Mississippi.

Headed up the Nachez Trace from Vicksburg. Jackson, Mississippi had the worst roads that we have seen and was not a great town. Stopped at Kosciusko and discovered that it was Opera's birthplace. On to Tupelo which happened to be Elvis' birthplace. Tupelo is one of the nicer Southern towns that we have been in. We headed toward Memphis and traveled through lots of green hills and swamps. The Mississippi river delta area is largely farmland. We have spent 5 days in Tunica, just south of Memphis, Tennessee. It's a sort of less hectic Las Vegas area with about 6 large casino complexes that are very spread out. The weather has been beautiful and we have enjoyed relaxing and sight seeing. We don't gamble much, but did manage to attend a great seafood buffet.

We spent a day in Memphis. They call this area the mid-south. We liked Memphis a lot. Rode an antique Trolley Car around the town and waterfront. Met an 87 year old delightful lady who had been a singer with the big bands years ago. She married a drummer and had a great 57 year marriage. She works for fun as an usher at the Fed Ex Forum stadium - a job that she got when she was 80! Walked along Beale St. an area noted for Blues music. B. B. King's club anchors the area. There are "notes" in the sidewalk (like stars in Hollywood) with the names of blues music greats. We did not know too many! The stores all had bar-b-cue, beer, ribs and Elvis memorabilia. Memphis was pretty clean. Trash continues to be a huge problem throughout the South. Those plastic grocery bags (they don't offer paper) and beer cans are the most common offenders.

We crossed the Mississippi River at two locations for short trips into Arkansas. What we saw looked pretty grim. In general it seems like Mississippi is in better shape than Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas.

We did drive by Graceland. It's a beautiful mansion with nice grounds. We decided not to go inside and see the 60s and 70s decorating! Have seen many pictures. Elvis' cars and planes were visible. There is a gift shop that claims to sell upscale Elvis memorabilia - not sure what that would be!